A woman who lost most of her left arm in an alleged case of domestic violence last year is expected to testify this morning that her husband was not at fault.

On trial on a charge of second-degree assault is Iovani Alatini, 33.

Police charged him after a car driven by his wife, Lise Solomua Alatini, 30, flipped over several times on H-1 Freeway on the evening of July 18, 2007, while traveling west-bound near the airport off-ramp.

Witnesses said the car, traveling more than 65 mph, crossed several lanes, struck the center barrier and tumbled three or four times back across the freeway and finally came to rest, driver's side down, on the edge of the roadway.

Lise Alatini was pinned in the wreckage and when Fire Department rescuers extricated her, they found that her arm had been severed between the shoulder and the elbow.

The physician who treated her at The Queen's Medical Center, Dr. Frederick Yost, testified yesterday that she told him that she and her husband "got into an argument and somehow the steering wheel was turned" by her husband's "hand or foot."

Under questioning from defense lawyer Marcus Landsberg, Yost said Lise Alatini's blood alcohol level when she was admitted to the hospital was between two and three times the legal limit for operating a vehicle.

Police officers and a Good Samaritan who stopped at the scene all testified that Iovani Alatini also smelled of alcohol.

Yost said he made no written notes of what Lise Alatini said about the accident but he told Deputy Prosecutor Jeen Kwak, "I remember the evening quite vividly."

He said emergency personnel brought the "remnant" of the victim's arm to the hospital for reattachment, but that wasn't possible because a segment of the limb was missing.

Since becoming a general surgeon in 1992, he said, he has treated perhaps six cases of severed limbs.

Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario is presiding over the jury trial.